CYTS customized an 18-day private tour for my family of nine, including three children ages 12, 13, and 14. From the start to finish, Charlie Zhang of CYTS provided the necessary attention, from developing the itinerary and cost, to providing support for our visa applications, to answering the myriad of questions that I had. He was quick in responding to my phone calls and emails. The trip was beyond my expectations! We went to Beijing, Xian, Chengdu, Zhangjiajie, Guilin, Taishan, and Shanghai. We were met by an experienced and knowledgeable English-speaking guide at each city, together with a professional driver. All the 5-star hotel accommodations, entrance fees, special shows, meals, domestic flights, train tickets were covered. My family and I were well cared for during the entire trip. If you want to visit China without any worries, you won't go wrong with CYTS. I will definitely use them again for future trips to China. read more

We used CYTS to book our trip to China recently. Cities included Beijing, Xian, Guilin, and Shanghai for 10 days. Pros - office in S.F. so you can pay in person or speak to the agent face to face. also prompt email communication. Cons - followup communication and intent/purpose is somewhat lacking. And phone calls are recorded. a little spooky. Our overseas flight to China left at a reasonable time out of SFO direct to Beijing. Over the course of the trip, we took 4 domestic flights. We had a domestic flight where we spent an entire day either waiting to go to the airport and/or once at the airport, spent the entire day traveling to the next destination. This happened from Xian to Guilin. Not sure this was because lack of flights or because the tour company arranged it this way. Bottom line - lost an entire day of touring. Then from Guilin to Shanghai - another 3/4 day spent at the airport. Arrived in Shanghai late in the p.m. By the time the local tour guide picked us up at the airport, our 1/2 day tour started at 3:30 p.m. and went until 8:30 p.m. Seemed rushed. Somewhat misleading when you read the itinerary. Then coming home, we had to fly from Shanghai to Beijing, then back to SFO. Was this because there are more flights out of Beijing then there are out of Shanghai? One can only guess. Overall, we had a great time because we had a small group of folks touring. Started with 20 in Beijing, then folks splintered off after Xian. Lodging was fine and food was good. No mystery meat. Big plus for us - it was only the 3 of us in Guilin & Shanghai, so we had what seemed to be a private tour with the arranged local tour guide. We really loved our tour guide in Guilin. He did a wonderful job. All the arranged local tour guides in China were very professional and passionate about their jobs. read more

I was referred tot his travel agent for China visa and air tickets。Kelly LIU was very professional and capable to handle my needs, for $40, they save me the agony of visiting the chinese consulate To get a visa and bought a ticket for very reasonable pricing. I used to buy my tickets online but they offered a better pricing plus saved me the time to search online. I would recommend them to everyone。 read more

I have read lots of reviews on this tour so it was with some doubts and trepidation that I joined this tour- and it does not disappoint. We were greeted by professional tour guide in Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai, and it was essentially a private tour since we only have 6 people and received attentions of a private tour. The hotels are great and meals are adequate to superior. I would highly recommend this company to people who want a reasonably priced tour to China while receiving superior attention read more

I booked my China tour through CYTS (Tour HA06). CYTS is an agent that connects you to the tour company in China (Amber Holiday's in our case). The booking process through CYTS was not very straight-forward. My bf and I do not speak a drop of Mandarin and I had called CYTS to see if this tour was available in English. I was told that it would be in Chinese however there would be an 'assistant' who speaks English. So we moved forward with the booking process. Once we were about to mail our check, we were told otherwise - that there is no assistant and the guides do not speak English. It's not that we had a problem with a non-English guide, we were just wanted them to be upfront. After some deliberation, we decided to book anyway. Since we took the train into Shanghai, we were not entitled to the pickup - so we had to find our own way to the hotel - this counted as Day 1 of the trip. We still had to pay the gratuity for this day, even though we did not use their service. Overall, the tour was as expected - they bring you to these shops where you are stuck for a couple of hours. Though the history and art of making the products were interesting, there was no pressure from the tour guide to purchase (the sales people were a different story though). We lucked out and the guide spoke very good English, but the tour was still conducted in Mandarin. The rides in the bus were no longer than 3 hours, so that was good, you weren't stuck in the bus the whole day. Hotel rooms were not 5 star, at best 4 star - and this isn't by N.American standards. There are 5 star hotels in China, and these were not them. Food was alright, same dishes everyday - and there was always way too much food, ended up wasting at least 50% of the dishes each meal. Saw A LOT on this trip, which was great. Overall, good for what you pay. read more

Just returned from china trip with cyts. Oct 2 to oct 15,2011 Overall the trip was good, but local guides were not so good in their English speaking. Some were not friendly and not willing to answer questions from us. One thing I am really object to is their local guide service evaluation method, for example just before your boarding to another city in the airport, the local guide handed their service Evaluation form for you to rate their service for helping you during your time in the city, then you have to return that to them before you enter airport security area. I think this is so not true feedback in service evaluation from clients. If the rating is bad, the local guide can destroy and eliminate this badly rated form and not turn in to the cyts. I think these form should be in a sealed envelop and mail to cyts directly By clients. I think it is so bogus. read more

My parents decided to go through CYTS to help with booking our train tickets and hotels because they thought it would be easier than booking by ourselves. CYTS required us to prepay all the tickets and hotel reservations. The train tickets were great, but we had a horrible time with the hotels. I had a great rate while in Beijing so I booked that hotel myself and CYTS even made sure that our train tickets were sent to our hotel in Beijing and called at the hotel to follow up that we had received the tickets. However, once we got to Shanghai, when we tried to check in, they told us that the reservation wasn't prepaid and we would have to pay when checking in. To make matters worse, the hotel revealed that the reservation had just been made through booking.com even though we were told CYTS goes through China to make all their reservations. They eventually told us that turns out we do need to pay at the hotel and they'll give us our money back. So much hassle for a reservation I could've made online myself. Therefore, we decided to call all the remaining hotels for the remainder of our two week stay in China just to double check that all the hotels had received our reservation and the money. Guess what? NOPE: 1. Anhui: The reservation is there, but the hotel can't see any payment 2. Huang Shan: couldn't even find our names or anything close to our names with reservations. Eventually, CYTS did put the reservation through and CYTS said that we could add a rollaway, but apparently they couldn't add a rollaway, so they'd give us an extra room without adding any money. Too bad the hotel can't see a second room and they won't be able to confirm ability of adding a rollaway bed until the day of check in. 3. 2nd Huang Shan hotel: Hotel reservation, but no money. And actually, the second room booked didn't even have our last name attached to the reservation 4. Shantou: CYTS told us the Sheraton doesn't have double beds so we'll need to book two rooms. I looked on the website and their rooms come with two double beds. So they overcharged us! It would've been cheaper for us to have just booked one room ourselves from SPG and then I would've gotten my SPG points. The lag time was also ridiculous since they needed to contact their Chinese counterparts every time we had an issue and they don't start work until it's midnight in China. We did eventually get the money back from CYTS for the nights of hotel we had to pay ourselves in Shanghai. We definitely won't be booking hotels through them again in the future. But like I said, train tickets were very well done. read more

I joined the China tour from 11/03 to 11/14 to visit Beijing, Xian, Guilin, Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. This was a 12 day tour. As we know, CYTS is one of the top travel agents in China, but CYTS does not operate the tour themselves. Rather, CYTS subcontracts local agents to handle the tours in different cities. That's why the quality of the tours were so different. The following statements are my honest opinions from personal experience. Tour in Beijing was handled by the local agent called CITIC. Long story short, they cheated us on this tour. According to the itinerary, we were supposed to visit the inside of the "Bird's Nest"-National Stadium, but we were told the admission ticket was not included. In addition, they almost cheated us by planning to bring us to visit Juyong Guan Pass, instead of the Great Wall in Badaling. We also got no chance to walk through the 700-meter-long corridor with its wonderful Painted Gallery in the Summer Palace and each person paid 30 RMB for a boat cruise to finish the tour instead. Moreover, we did not have an opportunity to walk around Qianmen Street which is a signature street since Ming dynasty. Thus, I knew it was impossible to ask the tour guide to go the extra mile to show us the must see shopping area called Wanfujing, which is not showed on the itinerary. Fortunately, God is on our side, because of the issue of the Bird's Nest, the tour guide agreed to reimburse 50RMB per person, and we will visit the Great Wall in Badaling, provided everyone paid an additional 30RMB per person to cover the cost of cable car at the Great Wall in Badaling, which is 80 RMB per person. The Great Wall in Badaling is just like the south rim of Grand Canyon National Park in USA, and Juyong Guan Pass is like the west rim of Grand Canyon. In terms of the scale of view, they are totally different. Please do not be fooled by the tour guide According to CYTS's website, we were supposed to stay at Crown Plaza Hotel Beijing, which is located at the famous shopping area called Wanfujing. Instead, we stayed at Xinyuan Hotel which is far away from downtown, and has a military base nearby. The hotel lobby was quite fancy and attractive. However, I was shocked by the dirty bathroom when I was walking through the room. No kidding! The floor inside the bathroom was really dirty. It was really disgusting. Everyone thought that the hotel was dirty. All the hotels provided an excellent both Chinese and western buffet style breakfast. We enjoyed them so much. They all deserved to receive 5 stars. However, most of lunches and dinners were lousy. Each of us paid US$2,800 for this trip only got these kinds of low quality meals. I am really wondering what kind of meal they will get for those who just pay US$99(plus airfare) for the trip. The lunches and dinners arranged in Beijing were not only bad in quality, but also the quantity was not enough to satisfy our stomachs. Even the roast Beijing duck which I had desired for years was so disappointing. The roast duck served in three different ways at some restaurants in Bay Area are still much better. The tour guide name in Beijing was Lily. I can tell she is an experienced tour guide , and easy to get along with. She was able to work with the driver very well. However, in order to make more money, a few tour arrangements revealed that she was tricky, not sincere, and selfish . I mentioned above about some of the trip arrangements she cheated us out of. The shopping policy of CYTS is one time per city, one hour each time. But, she arranged two shopping stops which are pearl and jade. Furthermore, we stopped at the jade store more than one hour before visiting the Great Wall in Badaling. Because of the shopping delay, we had to have McDonald lunch on the bus in order to beat the closing time at the Temple of Heaven. When we complained about the lousy meals in Beijing, she gave us the wrong information saying those tourists who visited other cities first, and came to Beijing last, they always give the meals in Beijing thumbs up. Everyone scared for the rest of the trip. Luckily, she was lying. In order to receive more tips, she created a formula which was in favor of her, saying we should pay the tips depending on the number of hotel nights in each city throughout the whole trip. Because of her selfishness, even the tour guide in Xian tried very hard to conduct two whole days' tour. Some tourists were only willing to pay one day' tips since we only stayed in Xian one night. In conclusion, if CYTS would be willing to give the local agents more budget to improve the quality of meals and also the local agent in Beijing promised to fix the problems mentioned above, then I would strongly recommend all my relatives and friends to enjoy CYTS tours. read more

10/19/2011: Just returned from 10 days China tour. It was the best tour I've ever experienced. Tour visited 6 cities (Beijing, Xian, Shanghai,Wuxi,Suzhou, & Hangzhou). Price was $2,100 including 3 meals daily, 4 star hotels, round trip economy air fare, SFO/China, tour guides. Food was excellence. Hotels were great. Tour group was had only 8 travelers so we received wonderful service from the tour guides which provided on time pickup at the airports upon arrival and delivery upon departure. Price also include entrance tickets to sites visited (Forbidden City, Great Wall, Bell Tower, Terra-Cotta Warriors, water boat rides, temples,) Received good communications and itinerary prior to travel. This is a excellence tour package for a complete first time visit to China. read more

WARNING: SAVE YOUR MONEY and DO NOT USE "CYTS" TOUR COMPANY I used this company (CYTS) for a China package tour ($2500) this summer, and ended up feeling that I got ripped off from left to right. Their business practice is full of false advertisement, gross misleading information, and incompetent staff. They advertised for a tour including Shanghai, then had a bunch of us arrive there at 1:00 AM and 6 hours later took us back to the airport to fly to Beijing for a layover and a flight back to the US. Their staff consistently lied about their mistakes (or rather their deliberate decision to change itinerary to make more money). Their office manager is at best a numb skull when dealing with complaints and concerns. "Sucks" can't even describe their customer service. read more

Our group of 10 wanted to book a tour to China through this agency since it was recommended by a friend. The total cost would have been around $35K - $40K worth of business. Customer service & communications for a trip such as this is VERY important. I called on 9/08/08 requesting information and cost on tours for 2009. I was told they would get back to me in a couple of days. I gave them my name, phone number, email address, and fax number. By Thursday of that week I had not heard so called again to speak with the same agent I originally spoke with. She seemed to not know of my request and took my information again. She said she would get back to me the next day. Well, you guessed it! By the following Monday, I still had not hear. I had called two other agencies about the tour and they responded within 48 hours. So, CYTS just lost out on almost $40,000 worth of business. read more

I wish I can give this company 0 star. It was the biggest scam I have ever had in my life. I joined the $99 special tour to China this November. It was a shopping tour actually. Of course, it would not say anything about it in its ad. After I paid, I got the tour confirmation from another company called Jacco Tours which I had no idea about it. Could I cancel the tour? Yes, cancellation fee please. Since I already booked the flight tickets and I did not want to pay the ridiculous amount of the cancellation fee, I stuck with Jacco Tours. In China CYTS Tours's ad, it said the special tour was for Chinese only. When I arrived the destination, I saw a few not Chinese in my group. The tour guide can't speak English, so I needed to help translate. WTF! The tour guide brought us to different factories to shop everyday. We spent at least 2 hours in each factory. My tour was only 10 days, minus the 2 days for flights, so I only had 8 days and I visited 10 -11 factories total. If we didn't buy anything, the tour guide would be mean to us. How are the products quality? They are garbage basically. I found out after I came back to the US. At that moment, the tour guide emphasized this tour was sponsored by the Chinese government, so the tour fee can be so cheap. That made sense, so we all believed it and believed in the products quality too. When you google "How We Got Scammed Out of $100,000 in Shanghai", it basically tells my story of the shopping part in this tour. Also, the tour guide asked us tips twice, $100 USD each person and $100RMB. According to the tour guide, he can't get a penny from the $100 USD tips because the company would take them all. I reported the problems to China CYTS Tours after I came back, they contacted Jacco Tours and said they were willing to offer me a coupon to Thailand. What made them to think that I will choose this company again after this terrible experience I had? I am reporting China CYTS Tours to the State of California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General, reporting Jacco Tours to the Chinese travel department and reporting the stores sold fake products to the Chinese police. Btw, this company accepts cash and personal check only, so there is no way to dispute and ask refund. So think twice. read more

We were from Taiwan. We used CYTS for more than ten years. Of course, we used other travel companies as well. But we found out CYTS is definitely the best one in the Bay Area. My two sons are professors in MIT and my daughter practices medicine in South CA. In May, our big family, including my husband and grandsons, altogether ten people joined the CYTS tour. The trip was so wonderful and unforgettable. I highly recommended CYTS tour. read more

YOU WOULD BE WELL ADVISED TO USE ANOTHER TRAVEL AGENCY. CYTS promises one thing and delivers another. Their idea of customer is service is "if you don't like it tough." Our tour had three changes and this agency DID NOT even call us to let us know. Imagine finding out that your tour was one day less, your cruise was one day less, and a city in China - Shanghai that you were looking forward to seeing turns into a night trip from the airport and an early moring trip back to the airport. So spend your hard earned money with someone else. read more

Our family used CYTS three times since 2010 and we are very satisfied. Compared to other tour companies we used before, CYTS definitely is the best one. Since we travel every year to China, we were eager to find a good one. We checked the reviews on line and found out some positive and negative reviews on CYTS. Positive included a renowned biggest state-owned tour company, high quality services at reasonable prices. Negative review is such as change of itinerary for some tour. I asked an expert why the tour companies have to change the itinerary some time and he told me in most cases due to uncontrollable reasons such as governmental restrictions or weather. So I decided to give CYTS a try in 2010 since many of our friends recommended CYTS. We joined CYTS standard tours for twice in 2010 and 2011. We were all happy. In 2012, we wanted to try the customized tour since we have total 12 people. We sent all our requirements to four tour companies, including CYTS and decided to choose CYTS after the manager delivered us the quote with detail arrangements at most reasonable prices. We visited the Southwest China in 2 weeks and this tour turned out to be the best one in our life. I gave CYTS 5 stars since they are real tour expert and their services deserve it. read more

Our family tried many travel services in Bay Area and even the southern CA several years ago and was not satisfied until one close friend's parents recommended CYTS to us. First, we were concerned about the average reviews on Yelp. The old couple in Walnut Creek, our friend's parents, smiled and said: " try yourself. Our neighbors and we used CYTS for the past twenty or thirty years. We go to China almost every year. We are very happy with CYTS and we have not written any reviews on line but we referred the business to many people." We took one short and standard tour first in 2012. We would like to say the standard was already higher than the tours we had before. However, you could not expect the VIP treatment when you paid the marginal fee. During the tour, we lived in the 5-star hotels or the local best and foods were good, esp., the breakfast. Two years later in summer of 2014, we had extra money and wanted to try a customized tour to the Southwest China for 14 days. We went to CYTS office in downtown SF. That is a beautiful office that you could tell why CYTS is one of the biggest and best travel businesses in China. The manager told to us and after knowing all the family members' interests and special needs and our budget, he gave us the itinerary draft in two days. We discussed and made some changes and as a result, that was the most impressive tour we had in our lives. This year, we will plan to go to Northern China. Definitely we will use CYTS again since we trust their reputation, services and we cannot find the better one in Bay Area. read more

Just came back on China CYTS Tour of Shanghi, Ningbo, Mt Yandang, Fozhou, Mt Wuyi, Taining.....14 days from 4/18 to 5/1 2019. The tour code is CYTS-CE03-190418. CYTS did a pretty lousy job and very poor management on this tour. I would give no star but for the hotels and some of the meals. The price they charged is a rip off with the quality and places they took us to see. The high points of the tour is Mt Yandang and Mt Wuyi but the rest are garbage and waste of time. They took us to temples after temples. Unless you are an expert in Buddhism or interested in temple buildings, it gets tiresome very fast! They also took us to some uninspiring and shabby local parks where there was nothing interesting to see. In several incidents they make us dragging our luggage from train stations and walked almost a mile to the tour bus. At one point we were doing this at night on dark street with no pavement and street light and one member almost got hit by a motor bike. There is no national tour guide that accomplished us all the way but passed us around to different local tour guides and their competencies are questionable. Overall the final verdict is: this is a overcharged, uninspiring, poorly managed and badly coordinated tour. I will not recommend this tour company to anyone. read more

Don't book a tour with this company--they deliberately change the itinerary of the trip after you pay them--then they don't inform you of the change until you are already in China. It was a terrible experience, and nobody from the tour company will call back. They gave us 1 1/2 hours to see the Great Wall and dropped us off at factories for the rest of the day. They said that we would see Shanghia, but then shortened the tour so that we only flew out from there. Buyer be ware! read more

I book a flight from SFO to Kunming with CYTS tour and happy with their service. The ticket price is almost the same as other price from on-line such as cheap ticket, kayak,,,, etc, but the difference is you can communicate and have a special accomodation. Michelle Liang. the agent can arrange the flight stop over in Guang Zhou with overnight stay without any additional fee. Thee response via phone call or email is excellent. I will recommend use this travel agent for next trip. read more

Mike H., I feel your pain. Your post took words out of my mouth (er.. head)! For those wannabe tourists to exotic places be forewarned about 'bait and switch' even though prices are competitive with other agencies. read more

I worked with Polly Lam and Michelle Liang, at CYTS located in San Francisco, in booking two tours: Yunnan and Guilin. Pretty much all our correspondences and booking were done via email. My husband and I traveled much on our own itinerary, this is the first tour we ever taken and we chose CYTS. After reading a poor review on CYTS, I was a bit leery how our trip would turn out. My biggest fear was being stranded in a China airport. Our Yunnan trip consists of a group of 22 from Vancouver, Sydney, Oregon, CA and NJ. It was a good mix. All except us spoke Mandarin, half spoke Cantonese. Being oversea Chinese, all spoke English well. Our guide can speak Cantonese but when he found out majority understood Mandarin, it became the main language spoken. The group was good enough to translate or pass on important info in English. The Guilin trip consists of group of 5 and the guide spoke in Cantonese. One garden tour was substituted with a trip to Museum which was preferable since it looks like it was going to rain. In both trip, accommodations and restaurants would be considered 4 - 5 stars Chinese rated hotels. The hotels were clean, spacious, nice surrounding and some a bit outdated. Hotels breakfast buffet had good selections and lunch/ dinner were good. 10 people per table, 10 dishes. Five people, 5 dishes. As seasoned travelers, we are not that fussy as long as the rooms, beds, everything are clean. Yes, we did made stops at factories/ shops. I didn't mind looking and even made some purchases. Keep in mind, these $99 tours are subsidized by the merchants. It's still a bargain. Except for Guilin, where two shops aggressively pushed for purchase, but no one was physically held back nor doors locked to prevent you from leaving. One thing to note, by the time you add tips, admissions fees, the $99 tour turned out to be $539 (Yunnan) and $449( Guilin). Even with shopping detours, we did do a good amount of sightseeing; about eighty percent sightseeing. Beware, they do push the optional evening shows payable in US$100. However, we did get good seats and the shows were surprisingly good. Polly and Michelle was wonderful and knowledgeable. She was patient in dealing with my constant questions and I can always expect a quick response. As a senior Chinese American, I may understand Cantonese but I do not read Chinese. The itinerary and confirmation were in Chinese and Polly went a step further and gave me an English translations. When Polly went on vacation a week before our trip, Michelle Liang kept us in the loop. We made our own travel arrangements to Hong Kong and Polly assists in booking our flights and seats into Kunming, Kunming to Guilin and Guilin back to Hong Kong. read more